Handling Stubborn People....

Q: Guruji, how do you help someone release their anger if they’re stubborn and don’t want to try the spiritual path
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You know, I would tell you, give everyone freedom. You cannot control somebody. This person is like that, what can you do with them? By our telling something to somebody, they don’t change and you should not control anybody. This is what my conclusion is, what? Don’t control anybody. Let them go the way they want. Gently guide them if they listen to you. If they don’t listen to you, well, it is their problem. What can you do?

Are you getting what I’m saying? You try to control them - your kids, spouse, and friends - without any intention; your trying to control them has no bad intention at all. But well, what can you do when they get so angry? You know, your anger is because of trying to control. The moment you stop trying to control somebody, your anger also vanishes, got it? Hmmm? You get irritable when somebody doesn’t listen, right? You tell them ten times still they don’t listen, and then what do you get? Irritated. Then your knowledge should come “Well this is the way that person is suppose to be. What can you do?  Jai Guru Dev!”  So immediately what happens? At least your brain gets relaxation, you don’t get irritated.

So, what did I say? Stop trying to control any situation, any person. You are at peace; our wanting to control is the problem. Do you get it? In any situation things will happen, this way or that way. Do your best and leave the rest. Finished. Got it?

Now, this should not be mistaken for lethargy, lack of leadership, lack of initiative, or orderliness. Are you getting what I’m saying? This is a very, very fine balance. A wise person understands to lead without control, got it? Gently lead without trying to control. And then don’t lose patience to tell not once, but ten times. You should not say it in the very first time “Oh, I said it anyway and that person didn’t listen.” No, you should have the patience to say it ten times and if they still don’t do it, then don’t get upset.

This is wisdom, having the patience to say ten times. How will you say it ten times if they don’t do it once, twice, thrice, and you say, “Well, they don’t do it, that’s how they are” then that indicates you are lethargic, you lack initiative, you lack commitment. I’m telling you something very, very, very fine, are you listening? When you have commitment, what do you do— you keep doing it... correct?

Suppose when you have to cut wood, you cut once, if the wood is soft, it breaks immediately. But if the wood is hard, what do you keep doing? Keep hitting. How many times? Until it breaks. So you keep hitting it. What we do is, we have in our mind the same benchmark for everybody. We think, “Oh see all this wood cuts once this hardwood should also cut once.” Then we get angry. No. Some are hard and some are soft. It all takes its own time to cut them. And if it doesn’t cut and it is not wood, then you call someone else.

You are at peace. This is my conclusion. What? Don’t control, let them go the way they have. But keep guiding them; if they don’t listen they are putting mud on their own head. You know, it takes four-five people to bathe an elephant. Sometimes, they make the elephant lie down and pour buckets and buckets of water, so much water is poured on the elephant. Have you seen an elephant taking a bath? No? Oh when you come to Bangalore ashram you have not one, but two elephants too. It takes two hours to scrub, they get like a spa bath! And every day they get scrubbed, and then good temperature water poured onto them. So, they stand up shiny, ten minutes you leave them and they take the mud and throw it all over. They have no sense that,‘Just now I had a bath and I’m throwing mud on myself again’. The moment they find mud and dust, they pick it up and throw it right onto their own head and look all dirty again. (laughter)What to do? Hmm.

Moksha.....Freedom

Q: Dear Guruji, I want to know why do we have to get moksha?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: It is a natural tendency of every human being to be free. Freedom is not luxury, it is a necessity. Not just human being even animals want freedom.
Babies want freedom. If you tie a scarf on the neck of a baby it just wants to remove it. You put a chain on a baby’s neck and the baby wants to pull it out.
It is the adults who put jewelry around their neck but children want freedom, they don’t want any restriction that is why they throw their hands up and down; free!
 
Wanting freedom is innate to human beings as well as animals. Every life wants freedom and moksha is nothing but freedom. You take a deep breath in and you can’t hold it there, you want breathe out. Only when you breathe out there is freedom. When you breathe out you want to take a breath in and that is freedom.


Freedom is a natural desire in every human being but when the mind get so muddled up in unnecessary day to day things, it forgets that it wants freedom. It is as good as someone who wants to sleep but has forgotten how to sleep. So every life or human being craves for freedom. It is impossible to not want freedom.
 
Freedom is not running away from situations and circumstance. Sometimes the situation is stifling or unpleasant and we run away from it and think this is what is freedom, but that is not so.

Freedom means being unphased by circumstances, situations and the people around you; freedom from your own emotional garbage; freedom from the jungle of your thoughts that bother you; freedom from all the entanglement that you harbor in your head and freedom from fear and anxiety.

Anything that stifles you makes you small and you want to be free from that. 
Freedom (mukti) comes first and then bhakti. Only when you are free does love well up in you and bhakti comes. If you think you are bonded labor you cannot be grateful.
If someone has brought you freedom you feel grateful, ‘oh I am so free. I feel happy!’
 
Only one who is happy and one who is centered can have gratitude or be in the space of love.

Wisdom Of Love ...:)

"I chant the name of my beloved in every breath. The beloved is faultless - perfect. But being in love I have lost my reputation.When there is so much love, you take total responsibility for any misunderstanding. You may express dismay for a moment on the surface. But when you do not feel that in your heart, you arrive at a perfect understanding. You are in a state where all problems and differences slide away and only love shines through.

Usually we get stuck in our differences, because we have lost sight of ourselves. In the name of love we try to manipulate and control the other person. This is natural that when we love somebody, we want them to be perfect.

You can never see the pits in the ground from the top of a hill. From a plane the earth looks so smooth. So also from a state of elevated consciousness, you do not see the pitfalls in others. But if you come to the ground you always see the holes. And when you want to fill the holes, you have to see them. You cannot build a home being airborne. You cannot till the land without looking at the pits, filling them, removing the pebbles....

That is why when you love somebody you find all the faults in them. But finding faults destroys love. Instead of filling the pits we run away from them. When you love somebody and see their faults, stay with them and help them fill the pits. This is wisdom."

- Sri Sri

Secrets Unveiled.....

Q: Guruji, sages have predicted our lives so accurately on palm leaves, Nadi Vidya. Is there really any role that I have in my life when everything already seems so predetermined? How does the path of sadhana change anything?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: See life is a mixture of accepting what is and wanting to make what you feel like having. It’s a mixture of both. You have an intention in your mind and that’s how you move on. See, you had an intention to come here and you came. But if you look into the past you say it is all determined, it is all destiny. That’s why I say a simple formula just listen to it. Look at the past as destiny so you will not keep regretting the past and see the future as free will so that you don’t procrastinate or become lethargic and say whatever, ‘god willing it will happen’. So you don’t become lethargic and do nothing if you consider the future as destiny. You should not say let’s leave it to destiny, no! The future is freewill, past is destiny and live in the present. This is wise way of living. Not so wise way is seeing the past as freewill and keep regretting about it, ‘oh I shouldn’t have done that’. Even after you became a medical graduate you say, ‘oh I should have taken engineering, I made a big blunder’. So you keep blaming yourself and keep regretting the past when you think the past was freewill. And you think future is all destiny, you want to leave everything to destiny and you just do nothing about it and you’ll be miserable in the present moment. This is the unwise way of living, got it?

Q: Dear Guruji, I understand from your knowledge that we have not one but several bodies. Can you please talk about subtle bodies and casual bodies? I’ve heard about them but I don’t know how or what they are.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes, physical body in the waking state. In the sleeping state physical body is at rest, the subtle is active; in the dreaming state and that is why you get dreams. In deep sleep both of these go to sleep but the casual body is still there awake, aware. And casual body becomes cleansed in deep meditation. And in enlightenment the casual body is completely free, yes. So when one dies what happens, physical body separates, the subtle body remains with all its impressions. The subtle body and casual body they both go like a balloon and remain and look for a right opportunity, a right womb to get into. So when the soul finds that the couple is having union and depends on the energy level and harmony between the couple and the energy level of the soul, at that moment it comes into that, so that type of parents. Sometimes the soul brings two people together. A soul chooses I want this lady and this man as my father and mother. So they bring those two people together and they will have terrible attraction, unbearable attraction. So the moment the child is born, you’ll find suddenly the attraction between those two people is gone totally, completely gone. This happens, and after the first child many people divorce. How many of you have seen this happening? This happens that intense feeling of separation comes and then you should know that the soul made this thing happen. It is so amazing; all these things are so interesting. On one hand it is amazing on another hand if you are not so much in the present moment you’ll go crazy, seeing how many subtle worlds we live in simultaneously.

Simultaneously how many things are happening in the universe, it’s very interesting! So you come into the physical body to cleanse the subtle body. There is no way you can cleanse the subtle body hanging in the space. So you come to human body so that you get rid of all those impressions. Once you have gotten rid of the subtle impressions in the subtle body then the casual body with the divine grace also becomes free, that is called Nirvana. No more craving or aversions, nothing, totally hallow and empty. Wanting nothing and totally satisfied. Anytime you feel that I am total, I am complete, death can come this moment I welcome it. If you say that, if you feel that rather than saying it then that completion is Nirvana. That has touched the casual body; the casual body gets relieved not by your effort but by just the Divine will and Divine grace. The universe decides that whether the casual body should be there or should be removed, should be dissolved. It’s amazing, you can work on the physical, and you can work on the subtle that’s all you can do. The rest you can only wait, but this itself is a great job, this itself is good enough.

Q: Guruji, when we die the body and breath are left behind and our mind, memory, soul are still together with the impressions. Do the intellect and ego also still stay with us? Can we use our intellect to calm our mind then?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: The impressions of the intellect and the cravings and aversions of the mind go with the subtle body. So when you die what happens is for sometime the soul is in confusion, it does not know. It has just come out of the body but it does not know what to do. It doesn’t want to get into the body because the body appears like very gray matter, very dark and completely unbearable. So it doesn’t want to get into it, it feels very bad and averse to its’ own body most of the time. Sometimes they go in. So the soul is out there and very peaceful, the soul is totally at peace. They see people crying, wailing. It tries to tell them, ‘hey I am okay, don’t worry’, but they cannot communicate. There is a tradition to keep the light burning at the bedside of the body. It’s in Christian tradition as well, right? It’s in the Hindu tradition as well. Why you keep a light burning near the head so that when the soul suddenly looks at that light and knows that it is light. Let it be reminded that it is light, if it is still craving for something. Just to remind the soul that the nature of the soul or spirit is light, a lamp is kept or a candle is kept burning near the body. It’s not for us, it’s for the soul because the soul can still see, and smell. It has lost the sense of touch but smell and light are still there; smell, sight and sound all three will be there. So the ancient tradition is just before cremation the son or daughter; son usually, takes the head of the person into his lap and in the ear he says, ‘you are light, you are soul, you are not the body. Drop all your attachment to this body’, he tells them. And then the body is given a bath and then taken to cremation. These words are all in Sanskrit, and people simply repeat it in Sanskrit without knowing it because the priests tell them to say these things. To tell the departed in his ear that, ‘the five elements will go back to five elements. You are not just these five elements you are light, you are soul, you are spirit, you’re free and you move on now.’ This is what you say in the ear of the corpse, in case the soul is still hanging around and it does. It does hang around because it doesn’t know what to do. So it takes nearly ten days for the soul to get use to this other plain where it has gone. And once it reaches that plain of ancestors, one day there is one year for us. Our one year is just one day and one night for them in that realm. So there are three levels or lokas there also; one is Vasuloka, second is Rudra, and then Aditya. Three lokas are there and so they remain in this for some time. And there are three different Devas, they take them to those places. Someone who is a pious and died in a very good life they are taken direct to these lokas and three angels called Pururava, Ardrahva, and Vishvadeva. Three different Devas come and take the soul according to the level. It’s interesting! So in a yearly ceremony that is done, the day you remember the ancestors. First you invite these angels to bring them to you, for you want to honor them. These angels, they are the custodians. So you tell them ‘Visvadeva you bring my father, my mother or my grandfather or grandmother for this ceremony. Bring them for I would like to honor them.’ Ancient people knew all these so well, they had access to those realms. Even today people do this, they do the ceremonies and they do all this.

Nirvana....

Dear Guruji, please enlighten us on what is Nirvana and better still give it to us right now!

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You know our senses always look outward and the mind through the senses always captures the world around us and then whatever the senses capture is stored inside. You look at scenery and the scenery gets imprinted in your mind. You taste coffee and the coffee’s taste and flavor, fragrance, everything get imprinted in your consciousness. You taste apple pie or chocolate and that gets imprinted in your mind. Similarly with sound and touch; you touch a certain part of the body and that creates a sensation and the mind starts craving for those sensations. So these impressions in the mind are like a screen between you and the world outside.

Now the more the impression the more it is stifling for the life force or life energy, the prana. Just imagine you go and sit and watch a movie in the morning, afternoon, evening; do it for three days and see what happens. Your brain loses balance, you go haywire. So many impressions, three movies a day and for three days, that’s it, you are ready to get into mental hospital. Then on the fourth day if you are asked to watch a movie you will say oh no, please I want to shut my eyes. The ability for senses to enjoy is limited but the hunger of the mind could be unlimited, you know. Bulimia is one such solid example, you stomach says please no but your heart says no I want more, so you stuff in more when there is no place and then you throw-out and then again eat. So it is an imbalance between the capacity/ability to enjoy and the desire to enjoy.


Nirvana is bringing the balance and having no desire. You know desire means a lack, desire indicate lack. If it is all there then why would you desire. You desire a car because it is not there right now with you. You desire something that which you don’t have. When your consciousness is fulfilled, it says I want nothing, I am satisfies, I am fulfilled that is Nirvana. Even hankering for enlightenment is an obstruction for enlightenment.


That is the story of Lord Buddha. Lord Buddha was in search of knowledge. He did everything that everybody said. Someone said you do this japa, he did that, someone else said you fast and he did that, he fasted and fasted because at that time there was another enlightened person called Mahavir who had attained enlightenment and who never ate food so the whole Jain tradition started with control on food where they ate every other day or didn’t eat because the propounder, the prophet of the Jain philosophy Mahavir ate very little food. In several days he ate just once because he was in bliss he didn’t need it.

So Buddha tried to copy this by also fasting in the hope that by fasting he may get enlightened but then he became so weak that he could not even walk. He barely pulled himself and sat under a tree and almost collapsed when someone came and brought him a bowl milk pudding and he drank that and broke all the vows of fasting and had a good sleep that night. The morning when he woke up there was nothing left, the last star was going down the horizon, the dawn was coming up and something happened within him. Suddenly he realized that’s it, there is nothing to look for now. He had been looking for joy here and there but now there is nothing to look for anywhere and he just sat that moment, that freedom dawned on him. That freedom is called Nirvana, freedom from everything.


See in life from childhood we keep hanging on to something or another, as a child you are hanging on to little toffees and toys and then you grow a little older it is toys and friends and then you grow a little older and you are hanging on to friends and a little older then children, grandchildren. Something or another kept occupying your mind, you got lost in outer relationships. My son, my daughter-in-law, my grand children, my this, my that and it took your whole life, your whole day, your whole time or you started caring for this or that, you are worried for the world so something or another occupied your mind so your mind could never reflect on who I am; what I am; what do I want; what is life.
It never had time, even all the religious prayers we did were for the welfare of something, to get something. You sat and prayed oh let my son be okay, my daughter be okay, let my life be comfortable, let me have money, let me have fame, let me have something or thanking god for giving you this or that. Our prayers are all geared for getting something or thanking for what we have already got. That means we are still latching on to objects, people and relationships.

Nirvana is that freedom, when mind is free it says I want nothing I have everything. I have everything this is all mine, anyway I have no need for anything. That state is called Nirvana and the same is called Samadhi, you know Nirvana or Moksha in Sanskrit. Moksha means freedom, liberation, mind free from all the hang-ups.


Suppose you are taken from here and put on Mars, another planet where you know nobody and you have nobody, how would you feel? Just imagine, you are taken and thrown in a distant planet. There is nobody around, what happens? You go blank, there is nothing! All our emotions are linked with people, objects, and concepts. When you get freedom from impressions of people, impressions of different events, emotions, objects and when your mind is free from all concepts and even the concept of Nirvana. Last obstruction is hankering for Nirvana, I want to be free, I want to be free. This wanting to be free can also be bondage. That state of nothingness that is Nirvana.


In simple terms it is said freedom from sorrow. Sorrow is because of the sense of mine. Someone loses their purse or their cell phone, you don’t get affected but when you lose your own cell phone or your purse, you get affected. What is the difference? There is a story, a father gave his home in the valley to his son and asked him to take care of the home and the father left for a long pilgrimage, trekking in the mountains. After a month or so when he came back he saw his house in the Kashmir valley burned down. The house was not there, it was burned down into ashes and the father became miserable and started crying, oh my god everything is gone, everything! By the time his son returned from the field he saw the father beating his chest and yelling, crying and howling. He said dad what happened?

What happened, see my life saving, everything is gone, everything is finished, my home is burned down and the son said, dad I already sold the house and I got double the money. A very good offer came so I immediately sold it. Someone came from another town and they were willing to pay double the money and they wanted the home so I sold the home dad.


Suddenly the tears immediately changed and a smile came on the father’s face. The situation was the same, it was his house. First he felt it was my house burned down now it was somebody else’s house and then he said anyways it is an old house, it burned down maybe it was purposefully burned down, now they can build a nice new bungalow. He started talking the other way around. It is mine, because of that I get more pain.


Me is lost in mine, Nirvana is getting back to me from mine. Instead of mine, mine, you go back to me, who am I; and when Buddha went to find who am I? He found nothing. He said I could not find an atma, I could not find a soul. It is all nothing, there is no self, no soul, there is nothing but the one who is experiencing this nothing is me. I experience nothing, I experience Moksha. Who should the nirvana happen to, it’s me. It is not the ego me but the ‘me’ as a consciousness which is ease-ness which is everywhere. So the ‘me’ is not an individual person but ‘me’ is a field of consciousness. This is exactly what Vedanta says. Atma is not an entity it is a field. The being without impression is mukti, liberation.

To say it very simply, from mine to the ‘me’ that is lost in mine and because of that it is miserable. The seer is lost in the scenery. Everything is scenery including our body is scenery and the mind derives from the scenery to the seer. First it gets onto the body and becomes aware of the body, then behind the body there is the mind, behind the mind is the intellect and then the ego; pass one layer after another and go deep. It is like peeling of an onion, you know like onion has many sheets, Nirvana is like peeling the onion, not this, not that, going deep inside to the center core. What do you find in the center core of an onion, nothing!


Now what is the use of finding this, the mind asks. Freedom from sorrow, freedom from misery, FREEDOM!

Lord Buddha said only four things, the first things he said is, there is sorrow, don’t deny it. Life is miserable; married people are miserable, unmarried people are miserable. People with children are miserable and people without children are miserable. Life is sorrow, people who have fame are miserable and people who are hankering for fame are miserable. People who have power and position are miserable and those who do not have are also miserable. People who have money are more miserable than those who do not have. There is misery everywhere. You have friends and you are miserable or you don’t have friends and you are miserable. When you don’t have any friends at least you are miserable in a different manner, your miserable because you don’t have something but when you have friends and you consider your friends as the cause of your misery, this is even worse. So there is misery and there is a cause for misery. No one is miserable for no reason; there is a reason to be miserable. If you are sad you cannot be sad for no reason, your sadness is connected to something, so there is a cause for misery; the second principle of Lord Buddha. The third principle he said is, there is a way and it is possible to eliminate misery. It is possible because it is not your nature, like you cannot eliminate sweetness from sugar right because sweetness is the nature of sugar. You cannot eliminate heat from fire because nature of fire is heat. If it is your nature there is no way you can eliminate it but it is possible to eliminate misery and there is a method for it, a way for it. So what is it, the cause of misery is the seer got stuck in the scenery. You know if you see innocent villagers they go to a movie and if the hero is crying they cry; innocent people, they don’t realize it is only in the movie that the villain is getting victorious. People get so angry and they throw tomatoes and stones on the screen, at least in the past they used to do that. Even in the plays, people got so engrossed in it that they would throw things on the screen. The seer got engrossed in the scenery; this is the cause of misery and it is possible for the seer to retrieve back. However miserable you are you cannot be miserable for 24 hours. You take some rest, you sleep and your mind gets back from the scenery. However beautiful or ugly, pleasurable or painful the seer cannot be with the scenery all the time. In sleep you retrieve and the mind comes back to the seer but consciously when the mind leaves the scenery and gets back to the seer and sees that this is all temporary, everything is changing, everything!


Including our own body everything is impermanent and when this becomes very clear that everything is impermanent, all relationships are impermanent, people are impermanent, our body is impermanent, our feelings are impermanent, suddenly the consciousness or the mind which was logging onto things becoming miserable turns back onto oneself. Me, I am… that return from mine to ‘me’, from the scenery to the seer is the method. From the scenery get back to the seer and reposing in the seer is Nirvana. You are reposing, content, and you find that the seer is all bliss, all love, all that we have been seeking outside in many things are all what the seer is.

It is said that Buddha didn’t utter a word for seven days after he had total contentment, the experience of Nirvana, he didn’t say a word. He just moved several steps up and down and it is said that the angels came and prayed to him to speak; if you don’t speak what will happen, you should speak. Then Buddha said people who know they know it and people who don’t know they don’t know it, by speaking it is not going to help. Then the angels persuaded him that there are some people who are on the border line and if you speak to them they will immediately catch it and it will help them. You should speak, it is then said that Buddha started speaking. Brahma the creator came and told him you should speak. You know there are a lot of stories to that effect.

The main idea is freedom from misery that is Nirvana; totally free from desires; Freedom from misery, freedom from pleasures and hankering for pleasure. You see it is the hankering for pleasure which causes misery and not knowing this is all ephemeral, everything is dissolving, disappearing, everything is changing causes sorrow. However nice something is, however ugly something is both will disappear into thin air. Knowing this you get back to the self.

Bang on the door......

Be grateful for whatever God has offered you today. And you will see that He goes on offering plenty. Never a lack. But if you go on seeing the lack, then that continues. Your attention on lack allows lack to continue in life.

The more you possess, the more you feel lack. But when you open your eyes and see that you are part of everything, a sense of belonging dawns. And in that belonging there is contentment.

You belong to this whole universe. You are like the cherry on the top of a cake. You complete this existence. You being here on this planet, at this time, brings the time into a fullness. You are here to crown this universe, to crown this existence. This very moment that you are observing in this universe is so precious.

When this awareness dawns in you, where is sorrow? Where is the problem? Where are you caught up? Where have you lost yourself? Some small happenings here or there, a few words from this person or that person? Your prestige or respect is tarnished? You feel you are lost?

What is this foolishness in you? Wake up and see this whole creation. Open your eyes and you will see the Divine in every particle of creation. You are here now today. You crown this creation.

In front of such infinite joy, all other joys here and there are nothing. Other joys are like dust in the ecstasy of your Being.

Spirituality is like a banana and religion is like the banana skin. People today have thrown away the fruit and are left holding tightly to the skin.

Jesus said, "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Two thousand years ago the human mind was simple, natural, closer to the source. One needed only to knock on the door and grace would flow.

Today the mind has become more complex, more confused. Today the door to our innermost chamber is so tightly closed that we have to bang it down. Bang on your inner door. See that there is no lack of love in you, there is no lack of anything whatsoever inside you.

You can experience God in the depth of your heart. Do not delay a moment. Bang on the door. All the wealth is within you.

-- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar